Wanna Hear a Ghost Story?

First, a disclaimer: This story is totally true but it is not for the faint of heart. It doesn't quite end with "and then there was a hook in the door!" but it comes pretty damn close. If you aren't ready to be seriously creeped out, read no further. (I'm talking to you, children and pregnant women...) Dude. It's cool. I won't judge you if you decide you're not ready for this. Trust me, It's not worth the nightmares.

Now...Every one still with me: turn off the lights and get ready to have your mind blown.

So once, there was this girl. For the purposes of this story we'll call her Shmaitlin. (You don't know her. She's a friend of a friend's stepmother's cousin's...um...Optometrist.) Shmaitlin wasn't counting sequins on any homecoming queen crowns in high school, but she wasn't exactly eating lunch on the floor of the handicapped stall in the girl's bathroom alone with her snack-bar nachos, tears, and a "kick me" sign taped to her back every day either. Except for a few slight social defects, Shmaitlin was the very picture of a model high school student.

She was even in the top eleven percent of her class.

No one would have suspected her to be the type of girl to...JOIN A CULT OF SATAN!

But, join such a cult she did. Now, lest you think poorly of poor innocent shmatilin, it should be made clear that she didn't know exactly what she was getting herself into until it was much too late. The dastardly organization was so well disguised that oblivious kindly elderly people funded the cult willingly by purchasing baked goods and wallpaper peddled door to door by cult members in broad daylight. This was because, To the outside world, the cult was known simply as the Century High School Concert Choir. Oh, the ruse was too perfect.

Insiders like Shmaitlin however, knew the truth. The "elite" organization first indoctrinated it's members when they were freshman and hungry to belong. "Choir is more than just a class. It's a family." The weak minded freshman were told over and over again. "Yeah, a family. Totally a family." The freshman repeated dutifully. It was only later they learned that by "family" the Concert Choir meant "a socially crippled group of people motivated by fear and subconscious daddy issues that would have caused Freud to convulse with excitement."

The mastermind behind the entire establishment was a man named -- for the purposes of this story -- Barry Schmook. He instituted a number of rituals including, but not limited to: memory tests (a potent cocktail of terror, rage and a few drunk tenors mouthing "watermelon, watermelon, watermelon" over and over again while the sopranos wept quietly), guiltraising...I mean, fundraising (If there were a manipulation text book, a whole chapter could be dedicated to the yearly butterbraid speech: "Now, I can't legally force any of you to sell Buttebraids and not let the entire choir down...Just like I can't legally make you be a good person and I can't legally make you not kick puppies. There are some moral decisions you just have to make on your own, I guess...") pop choir (if Hell exists, I -- I mean Shmaitlin -- thinks it might be an endless series of kick-ball-changes set to Wham's "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" amidst flames of sequins) and required "retreats" (awkward sexual getting to know you games's greatest hits! Oranges! lifesavers and toothpicks! The closest I've ever come to an aneurysm!) It's all so twisted and bizarre that I can't really do it justice in one blog entry. Just trust me when I say that Shmaitlin was in it deep.

And yet, in the end, there comes a time when every empire must crumble and fall. For the Century Choir, that time came during Shmaitlin's junior year. Barry announced that he was leaving forever about a month before the school year ended. He disappeared without a trace except for one excellent e-mail and about 60 broken shells of human beings. After that, he became more mystery than man. Rumors about his whereabouts began to surface at every turn. First he was a music theory teaching chemist. Then he was a med student. Supposed sightings were made on darkened highways in internet chatrooms.

Shmaitlin, however, never saw or heard from him again. She ran far far away from Mr. Schmook's lies and empty promises and moved on with her life. She graduated from Centyre went off to college. Twice actually, since she liked it so much. She joined a new choir at Kenyon College in a far away place called Ohio and fully believed she had broken free.

Until.

One especially cloudy day in Ohio, Shmaitlin was talking to her friendly new Ohio choir director -- known to students as Doc -- about one of the pieces the Kenyon choir was singing called "Prelude for Voices." Shmaitlin mentioned that she had sung the song before in high school. There were a lot of Concert Choir songs Shmaitlin had managed to black out, but this one had proven difficult to forget. All you former cult members reading this remember it too even if you don't recognize the title. Here, I'll give you a hint: It has to do with nudity. Still stuck? It's OK. Even my non-musical readership can experience "Prelude for Voices." Just chant, "na-ked. and alone. We came. in-to ex-ile." over an over again. OK? Now, find a friend and do it in a cannon! There. You've just sung pages eight through twelve. (See cultees? I told you you'd remember.)

Anyway, when Shmaitlin mentioned this to Doc, he asked her old choir director's name.

"It was Barry..." she began,

"Schmook?" Doc finished for her.

Feel free to take a moment to be terrified out of your mind. Shmaitlin certainly did. "AAAAAH!" She said in her head.

As it turns out, when Shmaitlin sung the song in the tenth grade, it was with music that Mr. Barry Schmook borrowed from Kenyon College. The two directors met in an internet choir director's forum when Barry asked if anyone was wiling to loan out the music for "Prelude." Doc answered the call and shipped the music straight to Minnesota. The story doesn't end there though. It ends with Mr. Schmook losing all the music causing Doc to decide never to loan any music ever again. When the entire story had been told, Doc said to Shmaitlin,

"Wow, small world."

"Oh." She replied, "This is no coincidence. I will never escape the Concert Choir."

And neither will any of you. Mwahahahaha! Happy Halloween, guys! Good luck getting to sleep tonight...